Tunnel Vision

by Sara Paretsky

  “I’m Mary Louise Neely. Officer Calley is here to take notes.” She indicated a man in uniform hovering between the opening in the curtains that led to the hall. “Are you up to talking?”

  “I don’t remember what happened,” I said. “I thought they were falcons. Now I see it was the hoods they were wearing. Their eyes were glittering behind their hoods.”

  Neely frowned at the nurse. “Are you sure she’s all right? Should we get a doctor to look at her?”

  “They were thugs. Hoods. Hoods in hoods.” I giggled at the thought and suddenly found myself wrenched by sobs. “Hoods. They jumped me. I thought I was being so careful and they were waiting on my own landing.”

  I fought back the gusher of tears; crying only made the pounding in my head more severe. The nurse brought me some water. Swallowing set off a stab of pain in my rib cage. Maybe I’d broken something when I fell down—was it stairs or was it in the yard? I tried to assemble my splintered memory. I’d fallen twice today, that was it: once at the construction site, and then down the stairs? No, someone had landed on me: that was why my joints felt like they’d been through a cement mixer.

  “I fired my gun,” I suddenly recalled. “Did Mr. Contreras—”

  “He came out with the dogs to see what was happening. One of the punks rammed a gun at his head and told him to call off the dogs and go back into his own apartment. That one kept your neighbor covered while the other two searched your apartment. That was what they came for, not to kill you, but to put you out so they could go through your place. When they finished they took off. Mr. Contreras called us and went to help you out, but you’d regained consciousness and were sitting in your living room. The uniforms didn’t know what to make of it at first, but fortunately the old man had summoned an ambulance.”

  I shook my head, a tiny gesture that made my stomach heave. I found the ice pack and pushed it more securely against my swollen cantaloupe. I didn’t remember the ambulance, or sitting in my living room. I couldn’t remember anything except the moment I’d fired my gun.

  “I have an alarm. If they opened my door and didn’t turn it off the police should have gotten a signal right away. Why didn’t your friends come sooner?”

  Neely’s face twisted in annoyance. “They get so many false alarms they don’t send a detail out first thing when the buzzer goes off. Your thugs—falcons—had about eight minutes and they made every one of them count. What did they want so badly?”

  “I don’t know.” I couldn’t think, or didn’t want to think—it meant facing the idea of my home in ruins.

  “We got the message down on State Street because of the Messenger children: every station is looking for them, since he’s such a high-profile citizen. So the Town Hall watch commander was alert enough to remember your name as part of the bulletin. I know Mr. Messenger is irritated with you, but I don’t think this has anything to do with him—unless you came on some evidence about his children that we don’t know about?”

  I moved restlessly on the gurney. “No. Nothing.”

  I thought of Anton and Gary Charpentier, shooting at me from the Home Free construction site. But they would have had to move faster than the speed of light to beat me back to my apartment. Jasper Heccomb: I’d broken into his office last night. He probably guessed it was me, because I’d been asking unwelcome questions. But I hadn’t taken anything, not even out of his packed cash drawer. Fabian’s image spun through my mind, but I couldn’t think why. Of course, I thought he’d killed Deirdre, I could remember that, but what was the connection to Heccomb?

  “Does Conrad know I’m here?”

  “We’ve been trying to reach him. He and Terry were playing ball in Grant Park, but they’d left by the time we sent someone over there. They don’t seem to be answering their beepers, but we’ve left messages around town for them. Can you remember anything you might have that someone else wants?”

  The resident on call arrived, summoned by reports of my resurrection. A grave young man with bloodshot eyes, he shooed Mary Louise and her attendant scribe from the room while he checked my reflexes. They wanted to do a CAT scan to make sure my brain waves were okay, but after that I could leave. The radiologist would examine the CAT scan in the morning and call me if there were any abnormalities they didn’t detect this afternoon.

  “You shouldn’t be alone tonight,” he warned me. “You mustn’t sleep too much—you need to be with someone who can wake you up.”

  Conrad, if I could find him. Otherwise I’d have to impose on Mr. Contreras. He’d be delighted to cluck over me, but it was too much of a burden for an old man, especially if some punks thought I had a dangerous secret.

  When the attendants wheeled me back from the X-ray department Lotty and Max were in the cubicle. They were dressed up, Max in evening clothes, Lotty in severely tailored black wool. Her frown matched the severity of the suit.

  “The Aeolus Quintet.” I remembered they were going to a concert and spoke the name aloud.

  Lotty’s face relaxed. “Your memory is functioning. The resident told me, but you never believe it until you see it yourself. I’m taking you home with me. You need to be awakened every few hours and I want to make sure that happens.”

  I leaned back on the gurney and let well-being wash over me. Lotty wanted to look after me, not to beat on me for running into trouble. She had finally forgiven me for last year’s assault. At that memory I sat up again, so fast that the pain thudded through me and spun the room around.

  “No, Lotty, I can’t. They may come after me again and I don’t want you to be with me if that happens. Officer Neely is trying to find Conrad. And anyway, you have a concert to attend.”

  “We’ve heard the Aeolus music before and we’ll no doubt have the opportunity to listen to it again.” Lotty put a hand on my pulse. “I know what’s in your mind, Vic, but this time I’m choosing to be with you in a time of danger, not letting you thrust me willy-nilly into its path.”

  “But everyone knows we’re friends. If they know I’m staying with you they’ll assume you’re holding whatever it is they’re looking for. Even Terry Finchley wanted to search your home for Emily Messenger as well as my missing computer software.”

  We argued the point for a minute or two, until Max interrupted. “Why don’t the two of you come home with me. That way Lotty can keep an eye on you and both of you will be out of the danger zone.”

  “But Conrad—” I started.

  “Conrad will be welcome to join you as soon as Officer Neely locates him.” He called Neely back into the cubicle and gave her a business card with his home number on it. “And we need to explain things to your Cerberus: he’s fretting in the waiting room right now.”

  At my insistence the nurse brought in Mr. Contreras. He was voluble with relief and explanations. I apologized for putting him through such a terrible ordeal.

  “Don’t worry about me, doll, I’ve been through worse. It ain’t like it was Anzio, where they was firing real rounds at us, you know, but when I saw you lying on the landing there, and then this thug pulls a gun on me—I should have let him shoot me instead of being such a crybaby.”

  I took his hand and pulled him closer to the gurney. “You did exactly the right thing. What if he’d shot you and I’d been badly hurt? Who would have looked after the dogs?”

  “Oh, doll, don’t try to make a joke out of it. I know I let you down, not checking who was coming into the building, and then letting them get the best of me. They rang the Lees’ bell, see, and their English not being so hot—the kids wasn’t in—the Lees just buzzed them on in. I should of gone out to look, instead of planting myself in front of the tube watching the races. No wonder you never tell me what you’re up to.”

  I finally got him to calm down. He didn’t like the news I was going off with Lotty and Max instead of letting him look after me, but he agreed in the end that Lotty could take better care of me than he could.

  Before we left, Officer Neely tried again to get me t
o remember what material someone might have been hunting, but I couldn’t think past the thud in my head. Jasper—but I hadn’t taken anything from his office. If he wanted to kill me for looking at his stash I’d be dead now.

  Neely wanted to come with me while I picked up a toothbrush, to see if the sight of my place jogged a memory. Lotty objected vigorously.

  “Dr. Herschel, if we don’t know what they were looking for, we don’t know if Vic—Ms. Warshawski—is still in danger. If they found something and took it away, we don’t need to worry so much about trying to intercept someone before they find her at Mr. Loewenthal’s.”

  Put like that, Lotty had to agree. With my arm around Mr. Contreras’s shoulders, I walked slowly from the emergency ward. The scorching bursts of pain had subsided; even the cantaloupe seemed smaller to my touch—perhaps it was only a grapefruit now. The resident had taped my ribs—one had cracked, but not broken. Really, I was in good shape for the punishment I’d taken.

  Fortunately Max had driven Lotty in his own car: I didn’t think my head would have survived a trip with Lotty at the wheel. Mr. Contreras and I climbed into the backseat of Max’s Buick. Officer Neely’s blue-and-white escorted us, with a nice display of flashing lights.

  38

  Safe House

  I slept on the drive up to Max’s house in Evanston. Seeing the shambles in my apartment had been an ordeal I couldn’t handle with my battered body. The disarray hadn’t jolted my memory—it only made me want to withdraw. Officer Neely had summoned a forensic team in the hopes my hoodlums had been careless enough in their haste to leave prints, but I left her to the supervision of Mr. Contreras and the dogs.

  Before leaving my place I tried Conrad’s number again. He still wasn’t home. He might have gone early to his mother’s, but I couldn’t remember her unlisted number and I couldn’t find my address book: it was either buried in the heap of books and papers in my living room, or the falcons had taken it. Neely agreed to get Mrs. Rawlings’s number from Terry Finchley and to try to reach Conrad there.

  The tidy elegance of Max’s home eased my spirits. Sipping fruit juice in the kitchen while he made up a bed for me, I could feel the pain unknit itself from my head. My arms and left side were sore; tomorrow they would be stiff. But with the easing of my knotted brain I could return to some semblance of action in the morning.

  Lotty examined my eyes and my reflexes. Finally satisfied that I was recovering well, she asked me if I knew something about the assault I hadn’t wanted to tell the police.

  “I’ve been chugging around between Jasper Heccomb and Fabian Messenger trying to figure out Deirdre’s death. And hoping for some ideas on Emily. Someone shot at me this afternoon at a construction site, but I don’t think that guy could have beaten me back to my apartment. What I don’t understand is why I’m still alive.” I tried to speak casually but my hands betrayed me, shaking badly enough to spill juice on the kitchen counter.

  “Shot at you?” Lotty shivered. “Have you told Conrad? Or that Officer—Neely, is it?—who was at the hospital?”

  I shook my head—slowly, to keep my brain from splintering. “Being knocked out made me forget it—it happened just before I came home. Who besides a contractor has muscle to spare for that kind of ambush?”

  Lotty forced a smile. “I begin to understand your methods, Victoria: if you are purely clinical about damage to your body it puts fear at a distance. I’ll try to join in. Surely Home Free is not implicated in Deirdre’s murder: why would a homeless rights advocate murder one of their own volunteers?”

  I hunched a shoulder. “Two days ago I would have agreed. But Jasper Heccomb keeps a lot of money in cash in his office—my estimate is five million. Maybe Deirdre saw it and threatened to report him to the IRS.”

  “Five million in cash?” Max had come back into the kitchen. “Perhaps he pays his work force in cash to avoid payroll taxes. But maybe you should take a nap instead of worrying about it right now.”

  “He doesn’t have a work force, at least only an assistant and a lobbyist ... ” A lobbyist. Maybe all that cash went to bribe elected officials to ... to do what on behalf of the homeless?

  Lotty urged me to my feet. My vertigo returned; I held a chair to steady myself. Of course, Jasper also had to pay the people who built Home Free projects—they could be off-book employees too. Especially if they didn’t speak English and didn’t have any way of questioning what was going on. As Max escorted me down the hall, past Ming pots and Tang statues, I asked him what language might sound like a bastardized form of Spanish or Italian.

  “Sardinian,” he suggested. “Or Romanian.”

  Romanian, of course. Workers from the old Warsaw Pact countries were flooding American construction sites. I should have known it was Romanian.

  “You don’t happen to speak it, do you?” I asked him.

  “A smattering. My father’s mother came from the town of Satu-Mare, and I used to speak it with her as a boy. Why?”

  I explained what I’d seen at the Home Free work site. “I’d like to go when I could be sure Anton wasn’t going to descend on me, to see if the guys would talk about what they’re doing. I don’t understand why the site should be so secret, but Jasper Heccomb has certainly done his best to keep me from looking at his work in progress.”

  Lotty, standing behind us, gave me a smart poke between the shoulder blades. “Vic, get into bed. I’m willing to believe you didn’t choose to get knocked on the head, but a wise person would turn the whole situation over to Conrad at this point.”

  “If I can find him,” I murmured, allowing her to lead me to the bed.

  She helped me undress, putting my clothes into a marquetry wardrobe. “Do you want to save this jacket? The left sleeve is badly torn.”

  I studied the rent fabric mournfully. I must have ripped it when I fell across the rocks at the construction site. The jacket had been one of my favorites, with little stainless steel rods and eyelets instead of buttons. Maybe the clever tailor who used to make Gabriella’s clothes in exchange for his daughter’s piano lessons could put it back together. He was almost seventy now, but he sometimes sewed for me when I hungered for a special outfit.

  Before climbing into bed I used the mirror set in the wardrobe to examine my own rents. The diamond panes refracted my bruises, making them seem larger than they were. I squirmed around sideways but couldn’t see the lump on my head. The spot was still tender, but felt only plum-sized now. I buttoned one of Max’s pajama shirts around my taped ribs and climbed into bed.

  “It’s hardly noticeable,” Lotty assured me, pulling a sheet up to my chin. “I don’t think you’ll even have a black eye from it—they didn’t hit you hard enough. It’s six o’clock. I’ll wake you at ten, just to be safe, but I think you’re fine.”

  At ten-thirty she made me walk on my stiff legs down to the kitchen for more apple juice and a little toast and jam. Conrad had phoned at eight. He’d taken his nieces to a movie, which is why no one could find him earlier.

  “He wanted to drive up here, but I didn’t see the point, since you need to rest and there’s nothing he can do for you. I told him you’d call when I woke you.”

  I used the kitchen phone. Conrad answered on the first ring. His concern alleviated by Lotty, he was more worried about what I was sitting on than my health.

  “The doc tells me you gonna live this time, Ms. W., but she isn’t saying for how long. What did they want so bad they tossed the joint? Level with me: this isn’t a game anymore, if it ever was one.”

  When I didn’t speak Conrad said, “Come on, Ms. W. You busted into Jasper Heccomb’s place last night. What did you walk away with that he’d want bad enough to pull a dangerous trick like this one?”

  “I told you I saw a drawerful of cash, but I didn’t take any. Did you go look?”

  “We couldn’t—dude never called us. What else did you see?”

  “Nothing. Honestly. Unless I’m blocking it out—but I don’t have amnesia, exc
ept for the part of my life between when I was jumped and when I woke up in the hospital.” I probably never would remember coming to and walking up the stairs to my own place, Lotty had warned me.

  “Well, who else you been burgling lately?”

  “No ... oh.” Like a turning kaleidoscope the memory of Fabian’s letter from Senator Gantner dropped into my mind. I’d left it on my bedside table. Neely had commented at the time that they must have been looking for paper—they’d pulled all my books and papers in the living room. But the bedroom had been left tidy. They’d gone in, spotted it, and fled.

  “What are you remembering?” Conrad demanded. “Do you do so much B & E that individual episodes slip your mind?”

  I told him about the letter. “I mentioned it to Alec Gantner when I was out at the plant yesterday afternoon. He’s got a pet security force out at Gant-Ag. They probably do whatever he asks, even knocking out strangers in their own stairwells.”

  Conrad howled. “Why did you go through Messenger’s files in the first place? Don’t you see we’re in an impossible spot now? What if Gantner did come looking for it? What can I—what can the Finch do? Go to Clive Landseer and say, excuse me, we’d like a warrant to search the Gant-Ag premises, also Alec Gantner’s home, because a private eye stole a letter from the home of one of our leading citizens, and she thinks it’s possible Gant-Ag’s security guards jumped her to retrieve it?”

  My head started to throb again. “I don’t expect you to do anything. When have I ever asked you to help me out of a mess?”

  “Never, girl. And that’s what pisses me off. If you’d talk to me before you got into a mess, we might be able to work out a way to get what you want to know without going through forced entry, theft, and then grievous bodily harm.”

  The painted flowers on the sink backsplash began to bend and nod in a breeze only they could feel. “If I talked to you ahead of time you’d try to talk me out of it. And then I wouldn’t know.”

  “What? You wouldn’t know what?”